I Can’t Label That Chord

More and more, I’m enamored with chords I can’t label under a triadic/diatonic/jazz framework.

They might be quartal chords, whose labels never seem to quite successfully describe how they work.

They might be the passing clustery nonsense in Alice Parker’s arrangement of “Vive L’Amour“, which work great because of the lines, but defy easy analysis.

They might be chords like the end of Puerling’s arrangement of Try To Remember, which is a beautiful sonority plucked from somewhere, but where?

All of these, of course, can receive analysis. It’s possible to label them. But it’s not possible to label them with the precision of C13(b9) or Fma7(#11). There is a clarity to functional analysis, but it breaks down, and the resultant labels are unsatisfactory.

But the chords themselves? Quite satisfactory. The reason they’re hard to label is precisely why: because they go against the harmonic grain of the piece, because they push beyond the ordinary triadic, because they break free.

It’s satisfying to play, to sing, and to write such chords in pieces. Even if it’s frustrating to try and label them.